Would You Know My Name?
by Blue Eyes At Night
Summary: Deathly Hallows SPOILERS:::: Teddy Lupin spends a Christmas at Hogwarts with portraits of his parents. Angst! with a light at the end of the tunnel! RR!


**Would You Know My Name?**

By Blue Eyes At Night aka Bean aka Cara

_Authors Note: Ok…so my Lupin/Tonks happened, flourished, was tainted, resurrected…and then was decimated my Rowling. This is for Teddy. Teddy deserves more then the casual brush off that JKR gave him! That POOR thing!_

_Additional note: The song is Eric Clapton's Tears in Heaven_

"I'll see you after the holidays!" Victoire kissed Teddy on both cheeks as she ran to Hogsmeade to catch the train home. Teddy nodded at her, watching a bit brokenheartedly as she disappeared from sight. This was his third Christmas at Hogwarts. Harry had spent every holiday at school, and had always liked it, and so did Teddy. It was fun and festive and there were others his age to interact with. Of course, it wasn't as though back home wasn't flooded with post-war babies but there was something…dreary about the holidays. James and little Albus had their parents there to coo over them, open presents with him, laugh and sing… Rose and Hugo had their parents, and their ancient cat, to play with…

Teddy didn't have parents there. Harry and Ginny invited him to their house every year, and when he was younger he went. But he had spent every Christmas night snuggled under the old quilt that his parents had left on their bed, perfectly made, the day they died…and he held a picture of them on their wedding day, smiling and waving. Treats in the morning had begun to taste like dust to him, there was a different kind of sugar he wanted that no candy possessed.

When he came to Hogwarts, he felt instantly cheered. His parents had both loved Hogwarts, but this was his father's home the way it was Harry's home. Knowing that, it became Teddy's home more then ever. His usually turquoise hair was a muted grey-blonde. That was his natural color, apparently the same as his father's. He was always too glum to shift properly around Christmas.

He walked the empty halls… usually one of his godfather's, or his many friends', children would stay behind, but this year the halls were eerily empty. Upstairs in his Gryffindor dorm room was a photo album Harry had made him. After the war, Harry had gone to the Lupin household and taken everything he could for Teddy. He bought the house and wouldn't let it be destroyed…but Teddy wasn't ready to move in there yet. Maybe one day he would, but for now it was just like a grim museum of the life Teddy could've had. The album was pictures Harry found that the Lupins had taken or were taken off them…it seemed that there were millions of them with their little baby boy. They'd only had a precious short while with him, but it seemed they were determined to make photographic evidence of it.

Teddy fingered through the album he'd memorized. There he was, a chubby baby with varying shades of hair that eventually rested on turquoise, and there were his parents. His mother was young with a heart-shaped face and short, lividly pink hair. She was smiling and, in this picture, staring at Teddy and making her nose into a bunny or a duck to entertain him. He'd gotten being a Metamorphmagus from her. Next to her, his father wore a magnificent smile that seemed almost dazed, he was so happy. He waved when Tonks elbowed him and mouthed "Picture!"

Remus Lupin looked older then his wife, and world weary. He had scars on his face and that straw colored hair. He was a werewolf, Teddy knew. Harry had told him how scared Remus was that something would happen to Teddy because of that. Truth was, Teddy was a lot like Bill Weasley. He had a few wolfish characteristics and liked bloodied meat, but he didn't transform. Some thought his mother's transfiguration genes had out-weighed his father's.

Just as when he was a child, thirteen year old Teddy clung to the album and went to sleep. Christmas Eve came, as it always did. Hogwarts was the greatest comfort to Teddy at Christmas because of the memorials Professor McGonagall had had erected. In a small shrine alongside the Forbidden Forest that was added after the war was a framed portrait of every Hogwarts student that died fighting Voldemort. The room was monstrous, and a lot of students wandered in and out, looking for relatives. In the front of the room, on the left and right of the huge portrait of Albus Dumbledore, were the members of the Order of the Pheonix. On his right, next to Mad-Eye Moody, were Teddy's favorite portraits.

Nymphadora Tonks Lupin and Remus Lupin.

As had become his custom he stared at them and was happy about the portraits that could talk back, interact with him in some way. He wished them a happy Christmas and told them about his year thus far. They excitedly asked about homework and girls and Hogsmeade trips and as he got tired, he summoned a sleeping bag, and slept underneath them.

As a child, Harry had brought him here and Teddy had believed that those were his _parents_ in those frames. That they were the real thing! It took years for him to believe…no accept, that they were paintings. Magic gave them a ghost of the personalities of their subjects, but at the end of the day they were still only portraits. Thus, Teddy only visited when he didn't care that they were two-dimensional, he just needed some semblance of parents.

As he summoned the sleeping bag his hair seemed to grow even more limp, and tears were behind his eyes.

"Teddy?" Asked the dry voice of his father, "Are you alright? You seem a bit off."

"I'm fine." He shrugged.

The portraits looked at each other and his mother sighed, "Can you do something for me, then? Teddy?"

He looked up, trying to disguise, "What, mum?"

"Change your hair. How about some holiday colors?" She popped her own hair into acid green pigtails as an example.

Teddy screwed up his nose half-heartedly but just sighed and shook his head, "Sorry mum. Doesn't appear to be working."

Tonks and Remus shared a look and sighed again.

"Please talk to us, Teddy." She pleaded, her hair shifted from pink to a mousy brown he'd never seen as she grew worried.

"It's nothing." Teddy fluffed the pillow on the stone ground, "Drop it."

"Theodore Remus Lupin." His father's voice was firm, "Do not tell your mother to 'drop it'."

"SHE'S NOT MY MOTHER!" Teddy shouted and his hair singed an enraged red, "YOUR BOTH JUST PAINTINGS! JUST STUPID P-P-PAINTINGS."

He started crying the tears he'd been holding back. The sleeping bag didn't stop his drop to the floor from hurting him but he ignored the pain, what was a bruise to a broken heart?

Tonks was silently crying into her husband's shoulder, huddled into his frame, and he patted her back and wanted to reach out to his son…but was stopped by canvas. He was, after all, only a painting.

Teddy was whimpering, "I don't even remember you…and you aren't real, you're just a painting. You don't know me either."

He sobbed a bit more, the other portraits in the room were watching the scene intently, "And…if…if I died. You wouldn't….you wouldn't even recognize me…if you saw me…"

"We love you, Teddy. We'd always recognize you." His mother whispered by Teddy was half-way asleep from his crying.

_Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven?_

_Would it be the same if I saw you in heaven?_

_I must be strong and carry on_

_Would you hold my hand if I saw you in heaven?_

_Would you help me stand if I saw you in heaven?_

_I'll find my way through night and day…_

In the morning Teddy woke up… above him his mother and father were asleep, her head on his shoulder and he was resting his head on her's. Her eyes were red from crying. But there was something else in their frame. There was a letter in Tonks' frame, as she was hogging half of Lupin's. The letter was written in a scratchy scrawl he had never seen, it said:

_Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees_

_Time can break your heart, have you begging please_

_Begging please_

_Beyond the door there's peace I'm sure_

_And I know there'll be no more tears in heaven…_

_Live the life we gave you, and know that we will always know, be proud of, and love, you. We always did, even before you were born._

_Love always,_

_Mom and Dad_

Teddy reached up to the painting and wanted to take the letter…but it was inside the canvas. Instead he ran into the castle, ignoring the feast and the stack of presents on his bed. Knocking over everything on his desk he took his parchment, ink and quill, and ran back to the paintings. The letter was still there and Teddy took out his wand with a shaking hand, "_Replico_."

After that Christmas, Teddy would go to someone's house for Christmas, he no longer felt like he was an orphan in a world of children with families. He was loved…even if his parents were dead.

_Fin_.

A/N: How'd you like it?? R.R!!!


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